In which we discuss voiceovers in games, how difficult they are, why it would be a bad idea to crowdsource voiceover work...and then eventually we get into crowdsourced NPC dialogue in general. Sort of.

Co-Producers

This episode of Spam Spam Spam Humbug is brought to you by our Patreon backers; thank you to everyone who supports Spam Spam Spam Humbug and the Ultima Codex by that means. And, as always, a hearty thank you to our Patreon co-producers: Seth, Johnny, Dominik, Chris, Violation, Adam, Avatar's Radio, Erik, Thorwan, Pascal, Neil, and Helgraf.

Shout-Outs

Umbrae, whose birthday it is. Was. Whatever.

New Ultima Dragons

Facebook: Brian, Bruce, Martin

Google+: Brian

Podcast Topic(s)

We made an effort, in this episode, to sort of sidestep the normal/basic topics that often come up when NPC dialogue (or game dialogue in general) is discussed: being engaging, interesting, consistent for each character, etc.

Instead, thanks to an interesting conversation that Merrik Dragon had in the Shroud of the AvatarDiscord channel, we went on a wild tangent about dialogue voiceovers. Apparently, some people think that doing VO for game dialogue is easy, with some arguing that it could even be crowdsourced.

So that's a horrifying thought, and it prompted us to try and dispel at least some of the misunderstandings evident in such a view.

In Other News

The Bard's Tale IV - inXile Entertainmenthave released a new teaser trailer for their upcoming sequel to The Bard's Tale franchise, which showcases a number of beautiful environments — and fearsome monsters — that they have built for the Unreal Engine 4-powered game.

Horizon: Zero Dawn - Barring a PC release of this game, it's unlikely I'll ever play Horizon: Zero Dawn. That said, some of the game's ecosystem design sounds awfully familiar to one who is familiar with the development history of Ultima Online: “There’s a delicate sense of balance within this ecosystem, which will be upset if certain machines aren’t around to provide some equilibrium. 'These roles are layers of complexity on top of the generic group behavior,' [Guerilla Games managing director Herman Hulst] added. And that’s fascinating stuff. I’m a big fan of subtle design choices in video games, details which you don’t normally notice unless you go look for them.”